From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 04/15/02-12:06:51 AM Z
On Sat, 13 Apr 2002, shannon stoney wrote:
> Ha! Admit it Judy! You are defeated!!!! I win in the Connoisseur of
> Ugliness department. I photograph Houston, the ugliest city on
> earth. By comparison, NYC is charming, bucolic, pastoral, and merely
> picturesque. Houston's ugliness is SUBLIME.
>
> I bet you a dollar my photos are way uglier than yours.
>
> >winter. It's a total contradiction. It's so homely it's interesting. Lyle
> >Lovett is from here.
Who is Lyle Lovett ?
> I live in an old neighborhood near downtown. My favorite thing to
> photograph is people's yard art. This IS a pedestrian
> neighborhood--one of the few that's left--built in the late 19th,
> early 20th century. The sidewalks are fairly close to the porches,
> so there's lots of decoration. One of my neighbors has a toilet in
> her front yard decorated with ceramic ducks and an agave plant in a
> pot on the seat. This is par for the course.
>
I'm sorry Shannon, this isn't ugly at all. It sounds even better than New
Jersey with the shrines and flamingos -- more individual character &
imagination. Which is to say pure MFA heaven. The Houston I saw had no
detail, no character, huge, shiny, & bland.
> Until a few months ago there were some old rusting warehouses just a
> few blocks from here that I also loved to photograph, but alas,
> they've been torn down to make spiffy new townhouses. Alas, will
> Houston go the way of NYC?
What you need is landmarking. You might have gotten those warehouses
protected. Then the REAL crazies are in charge. Around the corner from us
they renovated a building but landmarks wouldn't let them straighten it
out -- it's a little thing, about 3 stories high, but it had acquired a
lean in 150 years. They had to rebuild with the same lean.
Maybe they'll do the townhouses with rust? And are there trees?
Judy
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